Summer of discontent

In Australia Cathy Freeman is 'a cross between Princess Diana and David Beckham' - a brilliant Aboriginal athlete who seemed destined to symbolise the Sydney Olympics. But, as the Games approach, politics and a complicated personal life could yet destroy the dream. By Duncan Mackay

It is a warm, breezy summer night in Turin and the restaurants and bars are beginning to fill up with sharp-suited Italians and their designer wives. An Italian army bus draws up outside one of the hotels, returning its passengers from an athletics meeting at the city's Parco Ruffini stadium. The party is a mixture of athletes and journalists and immediately one figure stands out: the superfit woman with the streaked-brown hair. Dressed in the full Nike regalia, she looks every inch the sponsored professional athlete.

A concerned frown has spread across her forehead. She turns to relay her fears to a tall blond man accompanying her. He is clearly several years older than her but is ruggedly good-looking in a West Coast sort of way.

At the track earlier, one of the journalists had been asking questions about him. She had been polite but firm. 'No I won't talk about my husband to someone I have only just met,' she insisted. The same journalists were now on the bus and getting off at her stop. Panic swells inside her. She has travelled 12,000 miles to avoid this kind of attention.

One of the journalists lights up a cigar. They walk on past the hotel, more interested in filling their bellies than their notebooks. The young woman relaxes. There will, doubtless, be more impertinent inquiries, but not tonight.

If Cathy Freeman is nervous of everyone she comes into contact with this summer it is perfectly understandable. With the Sydney Olympics rapidly approaching, everywhere she goes people are asking questions. They want to know about her Aboriginal background. About her new husband. About the ex-boyfriend she has just dumped as her manager and who is now suing her. Just about the last thing they want to know about is her running.

In Australia, Freeman is a cross between Princess Diana and David Beckham. 'FBI - front, back and inside,' as one of its journalists put it. 'Bigger than Shane Warne, Harry Kewell, Dame Edna Everedge, Rolf Harris and Kyle Minogue rolled into one,' another announced.

On 23 September - fitness and form permitting - she will line up in the final of the Olympic 400 metres as one of the hottest favourites in Games history. Yet in many ways her remarkable talent is the simplest aspect of her life. Freeman is an Aborigine and, for that reason, to many Australians she is the transcendent symbol of the whole country. And that places a unique pressure on her. 'She has come to stand for the Sydney Olympics,' says David Rowe, a professor of media and cultural studies at Australia's University of Newcastle. 'She has come to symbolise a painless reconciliation between black and white.'

And that, Rowe argues, is the problem. 'She cannot win symbolically,' he says, 'because no individual can carry the weight of what she's doing.'

Frank Fisher, Kathy Freeman's Aboriginal grandfather, was a sprinter, cricketer and a rugby league footballer. When he died in 1980, his obituary in the local paper was headlined, 'King Fisher is Gone'. Frank's son Norman - Freeman's father - was also a natural athlete. He was known as 'Twinkle Toes' because of his speed on the football field.

Cathy arrived 27 years ago, born and brought up in Mackay, sugar cane country in north-east Australia. It was a tough upbringing, made all the tougher when Norman left Cathy's Aboriginal mother Cecelia. Cathy was five at the time, and Cecelia was forced to work long hours as a cleaner to support and feed her five children.

One day Cecelia introduced her children to a man Cathy initially called 'that white bloke'. He was Bruce Barber, a railway guard from Brisbane, and soon he was her stepfather. He was determined to help his stepchildren and when Cathy showed a talent for running he encouraged her. When she needed the funds to travel to inter-state competitions he knocked on doors and raffled plates of meat to raise the money to help send her.

Freeman soon repaid his faith. At 11 she won Queensland state titles in the 100 metres, 200m and high jump. By 15 she was telling her school careers officer she wanted to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games. (She was told little Aborigine girls were not supposed to have such ridiculous dreams.)

A year later she qualified for the 1990 Commonwealth Games as a 100m relay runner, but was remembered on that first trip overseas as a lazy trainer happy to get by on her natural talent. She seemed keenest on eating and sleeping, with the free round-the-clock cafeteria at the Games village in Auckland giving her ample opportunity to indulge both interests. Still, her fluid, loping style helped Australia win the relay, the first Aboriginal competitor to win a gold medal in athletics. In the aftermath of that success she made her first political public statement. 'Being Aboriginal means everything to me,' she said. 'I feel for my people all the time. A lot of my friends have the talent but lack the opportunity.'

Four years later she went one further and won individual gold at the next Commonwealth Games. By now a dedicated 400m runner, she celebrated by doing a victory lap with both the Australian and Aboriginal flags. While many applauded, she was also criticised by some white Australians, notably the then head of its Commonwealth team, Arthur Tunstall. Questions were asked in the Australian Parliament.

In 1996 at Atlanta she was denied the Olympic gold by the defending French champion Marie-Jose Perec, but a year later she established herself at the top of her sport when she won her first World Championship title in Athens in 1997, and again the Australian flag shared space with the Aboriginal flag. This time there was no dissent back home where Freeman had become the country's favourite daughter, one who had crossed the racial divide.

The Aborigines were gradually and systematically displaced after the British colonisation of Australia began in 1788. They suffered from exposure to new diseases and from discrimination. For the next 200 years their treatment by the white population may have become less brutal but the discrimination has remained. The Aborigines were banned from theatres and other public gathering places in some regions of Australia, and they were not counted in the census until a constitutional referendum in 1967.

One of the most shocking actions was the system by which Aboriginal children were also frequently separated from their parents and homes for the purpose of educating them in the white majority's system. Freeman knows about the so-called 'Stolen Generation': two of her grandparents were removed from their parents and put in foster homes on Palm Island, off Queensland. The system continued until the 1960s.

There are now about 400,000 Aboriginal people among Australia's population of 19 million. Although many Aborigines are integrated into mainstream society, and though even prominent Aborigines acknowledge that there has been progress, significant social problems are still the rule for their minority group, including much higher rates of child mortality, unemployment and criminality than in the white majority.

For many Aborigines the Sydney Olympics represents an opportunity to expose their fate to the world at large, to reveal what they see as Australia's dark secret. And some of them are threatening to use more than the force of argument to do so. 'The Olympics are going to be very violent,' Charles Perkins, an Aboriginal activist, said recently. 'We are telling people: please, don't come over. If you want to see burning cars and burning buildings, then come over, enjoy yourselves. It's "Burn, baby, burn" from now on.

'We're going to show to the world that Australia's got dirty underwear; it might have a clean suit and look good on the outside, but there is something awfully wrong on the inside. We're going to expose Australia for what it is: very racist.'

Some activists are expecting equally extreme actions from Freeman herself. As the highest-profile Aborigine competing at the Games they are demanding from her the ultimate gesture: withdrawal from the Olympics. For her part, Freeman insists it is an action she will not contemplate.

'I'm very much for unity and harmony, unity and diversity,' she tells OSM in a quiet moment by the Turin trackside. 'Boycotts don't work. It would be giving out negative signals. I'd much rather be seen as a young indigenous woman making the most of the opportunities of today.'

She is a shy, nervous interviewee, but there is no mistaking her depth of feeling. 'If you take running away from me,' she says, 'you're taking a huge part of my life. People say we should be protesting for white people taking their lives away. Why turn around and do the same to one of our own? Everyone deserves to be free.

'I love my people and where I come from, but I am not at the Olympics to be political. I don't think to myself that I've got to make this next move for the Aboriginal cause. I am at the Olympic Games to run the fastest 400 metres of my life.'

Many prominent Aborigines back Freeman's approach to the Games. Others, like the Australian rugby league star turned boxer Anthony Mundine believes she 'is being used' by the government and the Sydney organising committee to help defuse the Aboriginal issue.

'Other great athletes have taken stances for their people,' he told Sydney's Sun-Herald newspaper. 'Jesse Owens stood up to Adolf Hitler, Muhammad Ali tossed his gold medal into the river because of race and Tommie Smith and John Carlos did it in 1968 in Mexico. They are all great because they stood by what they said.

'Really I don't believe they are her real views. I know Cathy. She is a friend of mine, and I know what is in her heart. If Cathy is really proud of where she comes from, then she should make a stand for her people.'

As if things were not pressured enough for Cathy Freeman this summer, there has also been the enduring complications of her personal life. Freeman was still a schoolgirl when she was wooed by Nick Bideau, then a 30-year-old sports journalist. At first her family tried to break up the relationship, but they were unable to stop Freeman moving to Melbourne to live with Bideau, where he became her manager, cook, training companion, part-time coach business consultant - and lover.

With 'Prince Charming', as she called him, Freeman really began to make a name for herself on the international stage but after seven years their intense relationship imploded in 1997 when Freeman won her first world 400m title. 'It has really tested me, not only physically and mentally but emotionally,' she said at the time. 'I have had to get through a few rough patches. There were times, and I mean really serious times, when I was pretty down on myself. If I can get through a year like this one, I think I can pretty much weather anything.'

Both sought new loves: Bideau beginning a relationship and having a baby with the Irish distance runner Sonia O'Sullivan; Freeman turning to Alexander Bodecker, an American executive with Nike who, at 46, is nearly 20 years her senior.

Yet, Freeman kept Bideau on as manager, a situation that caused tension between Freeman and Bodecker, who became her husband last September. With Bideau devoted to getting the best out of Freeman on the track, and Bodecker devoted to doing the best for Freeman overall, conflict was inevitable.

At every major championship it was Bideau who would shepherd Freeman from the athletes' village, first to the warm-up track then to the call room at the stadium. He it was who provided the emotional strength and delivered the final words of advice before she would race. The relationship between the two men worsened, and the situation came to a head earlier this year when there were vicious, bad tempered fights between the two. In March, Freeman stepped in, announcing her split with Bideau and the appointment of Alistair Hamblin as her new business manager. Nobody was very surprised.

As she looks out over the empty stands in the Turin stadium, Freeman admits to feeling 'a bit uncomfortable' talking about the change, but it was clear the impetus came from Freeman herself. 'I'm the one, ultimately, who decides any business Freeman does and where Freeman goes,' she says deliberately referring to herself in the third person.

The reaction to the split has been interesting. Some questioned not just its timing, but whether Freeman was capable of achieving her goals without Bideau's presence. It puts Freeman in the impossible position of having to win the gold medal to prove herself right.

Her talent has been nourished by the circle of advisers she has had looking after her for the past 10 years, chiefly Bideau, the Melbourne Track Club coach Peter Fortune and her agent, Athletics Australia's international liaison officer Maurie Plant. Bideau has gone but the rest remain.

Bideau has retaliated by issuing a statement detailing his continuing support for Freeman. If that suggested the split was amicable, his next action revealed his true feelings: issuing legal proceedings against Freeman for breach of contract, a process that promises to be long and bloody and many fear may distract Freeman as she prepares for the Olympics. 'The whole thing is going off the rails, it is unheard of, it's a national crisis,' says one Australian athletics insider. 'She only gets one shot at this and it looks like it is slipping away and she won't talk to anyone. It is madness.'

'I just thought it was time to take a bit of control,' Freeman says. 'I wanted to be in a position where I could do things more for myself. From when I was young, things were done for me and I just let people do it for me. I didn't know anything different.

'As I've grown older, I've realised there are things, such as the finer details of business that come my way, that I can actually have more input into and do more decision-making.'

If Cathy Freeman ever doubted the enormous pressure on her to win the Olympic gold medal then it was forcibly hammered home at the World Championships in Seville last August. After retaining her 400m title she had to run the gauntlet of journalists, photographers and cameramen from the track back to her clothes. 'That was nothing,' said Freeman when she was asked later about the chaotic scene, 'absolutely nothing, compared to what I'll be going through next year.'

'No, I wouldn't like to be in Cathy Freeman's shoes,' says one of her rivals, the British runner Katharine Merry. 'The people in Australia are expecting massive, massive things of her. I've just spent three months out there and she is huge in Australia. Her face is, like, everywhere. I'd rather that pressure was on her than on me.' She pauses for a second. 'But then,' she adds, 'I wouldn't mind having two World Championship gold medals and being the best in the world.'
Merry thinks that despite the pressure Freeman will pull through. 'Knowing Cathy, though, I don't think she will fall apart. I think she'll be all right.'

At the moment Freeman is trying to avoid the media pressure by keeping her distance from her homeland. 'It is such a relief to get out of Australia,' she says. 'I feel so much freedom in another country. I love it. There is so much expectation in Australia and so much pressure off the track. I can barely move around the streets. The fact that people have allowed me into their lives and hearts is a wonderful thing, but at the same time I'm a very shy and private person.
'It's difficult to relax when I go out. Everyone in Australia seems to think I'm their sister. They feel they know me really well. I should be used to it but I'm not sure you ever get used to that level of attention. I'm confronted all the time by the unexpected. People stop me in the street and ask my advice about the most personal things.'

In the same way that an alcoholic tries to come to terms with his problem by joining a self-help group, Freeman has sought refuge in the company of other world-class athletes, such as Maurice Greene and Colin Jackson.

Hi, my name's Cathy and I'm a gold medal contender.

She travelled to Los Angeles to train with the world 100m record holder Greene. Now she's working with Jackson, Britain's 110m hurdles champion, in Bath.

'It's like a warm blanket to be in the presence of people who are pushing hard, who want success the same as you. They have a deeper understanding of what you are going through. Maurice and Colin are not only great athletes, they are nice people and good to work with. I like the idea of being around athletes who are under pressure to perform.'

By a perverse irony Freeman and Bideau are currently separated by a stretch of the M4: she's in Bath, he's in Teddington. However, there is no guarantee that she will stay. Next week she will probably be somewhere else.

But wherever she goes she cannot run from the pressure and the sense of expectation. Until 23 September they are just part of her baggage.